


Vincent in the Basement

by purglepurglepurgle



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Sleep, Vincent in the basement, dark humour, did someone say projection, dry!vincent, vincent gives the basement 0 stars on tripadvisor, worst airbnb ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:20:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purglepurglepurgle/pseuds/purglepurglepurgle
Summary: Vincent in the basement, sleeping and being generally displeased with the arrangement.
Kudos: 14





	Vincent in the Basement

The first time it happens, Vincent thinks he's dreamed it.

He gets a lot of strange dreams, here in the basement. He's grown perversely fond of the ones where he's running from the man with the knife, because at least in those, he can move. There's never any pain when Vincent loses his arm. If anything, it makes a welcome change. And although the ones with Lucrecia are probably still bad enough to count as nightmares, they've never made him scream.

The sleep paralysis, however...

He seems to be competing in an compulsory arms race with his own brain. At some point, in the day or night (no sense of time down here), he'll be lying on his side, gaze fixed dully on the lining of the coffin (if nothing else, he has proven his theory that Hojo is a weird, weird man), and then he'll discover he can't move his head, or his vision is lagging when he moves his eyes, or, the worst, he's lost all proprioception. His limbs don’t obey him; he can’t even remember how to issue commands. He knows something terrifying is coming, inching closer, but if he tries to shout, all that comes out is a whispery groan. The thing approaches. He's frozen. These days, he always suspects he's dreaming, but that never helps. On the rare occasions he _can_ reach his hand out, he does, and the coffin is hard and splintered, a perfect imitation of wood. His mind even recreates the _hinges_. Cold metal. Credit where it's due: his brain definitely pays attention to detail when it fucks with him.

He's held fast, terrified, until he stumbles across some marvellous confirmation that he _is_ dreaming after all. Maybe he notices that he has both his arms back. Then (and he wishes this were at least more romantic), it's like being pulled out of a blocked sink with a plunger. He wakes, gasping.

And repeat. Each time, the illusion gets more convincing, as the sadist in his brain learns from its past mistakes.

But back to the subject at hand. Vincent's used to all a manner of strange and horrible dreams, so the first time he segues from Lucrecia slitting his throat to his arm sprouting purple fur and his teeth lengthening to fangs, he just thinks, 'oh, here we go again', and lies there, waiting for it to pass. He can feel the cold, and a sense of reality-- but he's had both in previous dreams. Even before Hojo locked him in here, Vincent’s dreams would throw him into snowdrifts, or shake him by the neck. He and his brain have never been on the best of terms. Perhaps he didn't pick the most soothing career.

Anyway, when Galian Beast first makes an appearance, it's not quite accurate to say that Vincent doesn't _notice_ , but it's something close.

The third time it happens, he can't seem to wake up. After a while, still beastlike, he lunges out of the coffin, paces around the room. He kicks some of Hojo's old books, crushes a skull in the corner. He scores his claws across the wall.

"I know I'm dreaming!" he shouts, but it comes out as a wordless roar.

He climbs back into the coffin, shuts his eyes. Still dreaming. Roaring again, he gnashes at the side, bites into the wood. It's dry, with old mould; he coughs.

After what feels like hours, and some time spent in a daze, he thinks he's woken up. He runs his tongue over his teeth, and they're back to their usual length. Except, when he opens his eyes, the bite is still missing from the coffin.

_Maybe I bit into it in my sleep?_

He sits up. Hojo's books have been moved. The skull in the corner is still crushed.

_Sleepwalking?_

(He has often suspected he moves when the sleep paralysis hits)

But... the walls. There are clawmarks.

He gets up, walks over. Could he have done it with Hojo's stupid fucking metal piece of shit practical joke?

He tentatively claws at the wall with the metal arm. Nothing. He hits it harder. Still no mark. He shivers. This means he's still asleep. But he _feels_ so awake... and his realisation that he is asleep has not woken him up, so it could be a while before he wakes from this one. Well, nothing to do. He picks up a book and waits to wake up.

He falls asleep, dreams, wakes, sleeps, wakes, dreams, wakes, and all the time, the clawmarks on the wall persist. He thinks it's an elaborate mental hoax, the type that feels like years passing for every minute of 'real' time. He looks out at the mouldy basement bricks and the cracked stone floor, and he wishes his brain could come up with a more creative setting, at least. Then again, given his brain's usual displays of creativity, maybe this is for the best. At least there's nothing in here _with_ him. He lies back in the coffin. His feet scrape the lining.

"So, this is my life, now…"

He wonders where Hojo obtained the pointed metal shoes.

Later (days? months? years?), Vincent meets AVALANCHE, and, resolving to rejoin the living at last, he leaves the room, in a blur of voices. He's long-forgotten the significance of the clawmarks on the wall. So he's more surprised than any of them when, in battle, Galian Beast returns.

And don't get him started on Hellmasker.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! Unrelated to this fic: I've been busy working on (ie: procrastinating from) a file-off-the-serial-numbers 'original' thing; if anyone wants to read, lmk, and I'll send a file when it's done, or something (2000 words currently; expecting about 60000 so... this'll take a while). I set up purglepurglepurgle.tumblr.com as an inbox a while back, so feel free to leave a message there if you want. :) I wanted to write an extended Turkfic that was so AU it made more sense to do it as its own thing... Though it felt like a past-tense sort of project, and writing in the past tense feels like wading through treacle, so... meep.


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